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Examples of Type I. to be Classified for the Kind of Series.
Examples of Type I. to be Classified for the Kind of Series. The following examples of the first type of the expository paragraph should be classified according to the series each represents. The student should be able to tell whether they are series of examples, of definitions, of analogies, of repetitions, and so forth. I. Suppose that a man in pouring down a glass of claret could drink the south of France, that he could so dis¬integrate the wine by the force of imagination as to taste in it all the clustered beauty and bloom of the grape, all the dance and song and sunburnt jollity of the vintage. Or suppose that in eating bread he could transubstantiate it with the tender blade of spring, the gleam-flitted corn ocean of summer, the royal autumn with its golden beard, and the merry funerals of har¬vest. This is what the great poets do for us, we cannot tell how, with their fatally chosen words crowding the happy veins of language again, with all the life and meaning and music that had been dribbling away from them since Adam. — JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, Leaves from my Journal. The cow has at least four tones or lows. First, there is her alarmed or distressed low when deprived of her calf, or separated from her mates,— her low of affec¬tion. Then there is her call of hunger, a petition for food, sometimes full of impatience, or her answer to the farmer's call, full of eagerness. Then there is that peculiar frenzied bawl she utters on smelling blood, which causes every member of the herd to lift its head and hasten to the spot,— the native cry of the clan. When she is gored or in great danger she bawls also, — JOHN BURROUGHS, Birds and Poets. Humor is the describing the ludicrous as it is in itself ; wit is the exposing it, by comparing or contrast¬ing it with something else. Humor is, as it were, the growth of nature and accident ; wit is the product of art and fancy. Humor, as it is shown in books, is an imitation of the natural or acquired absurdities of man¬kind, or of the ludicrous in accident, situation, and character ; wit is the illustrating and heightening the sense of that absurdity by some sudden and unexpected likeness or opposition of one thing to another, which sets off the quality we laugh at or despise in a still more contemptible or striking point of view. —WILLIAM HAZLITT, Wit and Humor. IV. So all healthily minded people like making money— ought to like it, and to enjoy the sensation of winning it ; but the main object of their life is not money ; it is something better than money. A good soldier, for instance, mainly wishes to do his fighting well. He is glad of his pay—very properly so, and justly grumbles when you keep him ten years without it—still, his main notion of life is to win battles, not to be paid for win¬ning them. So of clergymen. They like pew rents and baptismal fees, of course ; but yet, if they are brave and well educated, the pew rent is not the sole object of their lives, and the baptismal fee is not the sole purpose of the baptism ; the clergyman's object is essentially to baptize and preach, not to be paid for preaching. So of doctors. They like fees no doubt,— ought to like them ; yet if they are brave and well educated, the entire object of their lives is not fees. They, on the whole, desire to cure the sick ; and,— if they are good doctors, and the choice were fairly put to them,—would rather cure their patient and lose their fee, than kill him and get it. And so with all other brave and rightly trained men ; their work is first, their fee second—very important always, but still second. — JOHN RUSKIN, The Crown of Wild Olive. V. Why don't I write a novel ? Well, there are several reasons against it. In the first place, I should tell all my secrets, and I maintain that verse is the proper medium for such revelations Again, I am terribly afraid I should show up all my friends Now I am afraid all my friends would not bear showing up very well ; for they have an average share' of the common weakness of humanity, which I am pretty cer¬tain would come out Once more, I have sometimes thought it possible I might be too dull to write such a story as I should wish to write. And finally, I think it very likely I shall write a story one of these days.